


don't even sing about it

by percivale



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:55:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21617197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/percivale/pseuds/percivale
Summary: Sylvain discovers Felix grieving his father's death. They share a moment of spoken and unspoken words. "They don't sing about the ugly side of sacrifice."
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 2
Kudos: 76





	don't even sing about it

He used to cry like this before. His back hunched, the heaving breaths that filtered through his clenched teeth, his hands gripping his forehead, his fingers like spider legs grappling its catch—such a pronounced ritual, left where it had always been, even in the eight or so years Sylvain was last a witness to it. But Felix cried all the years he refused to cry into his room all at once, the emotions now a curdled, festering mélange; it was not just the grief of the moment, as it could’ve been. In the white noise of his thoughts, Sylvain imagined letting the horses out of the stables—a comparison, if the horses hadn’t been let out in eight years. (He’d laugh that one off, but now was not the time for that.)

He did what he remembered doing when Glenn died and held his hands up to Felix’s face, pushing his palms upward. Sylvain always recalled Felix liked the sensation of it, something he never told anyone else—not even Dimitri. (And no one had seen Felix cry as many times as Sylvain, including his father, and he stopped crying after his brother’s death.) He made sure to rub his palms in a circular motion, a bit like if he were kneading the folds out of a blanket. Enough pressure. Inconsistent candlelight caused the room to flicker. Blue-black hair unraveled over Sylvain’s fingers as he gently took Felix’s hands from his forehead and lowered them, revealing fury red marks from his nails digging in; in the past he’d actually caused his forehead to bleed this way, and this was why Sylvain moved them. He gazed into the eyes of a man afraid to grieve for his father. _Does he think he doesn’t deserve to grieve? Or does his continuing hatred make him reluctant?_

“Felix. Can you hear me?”

Sylvain immediately saw his voice had an effect on him; he didn’t realize how long it had been since either of them said anything, one too occupied with the sobs of the other to speak. Already he felt Felix’s breaths begin to calm, and the tension in his shoulders dissolved. Something in the air slithered away like a dark leech, disappearing into the disheveled pile of books in the corner. This was when Sylvain processed his surroundings and noticed the aftermath, the extent of the breakdown—a chair turned over, snapped quill on the desk, ink spilled on the floor and splattered on the bare walls, leaves and books everywhere. The uncharacteristic disarray of Felix’s room became a testament to the dangers of carrying one’s feelings for so long. There were three candles lit, two on the desk and one in the sconce on the wall. Sylvain felt himself pulled in, suddenly.

“When did you get here?” Felix’s voice was so quiet, still gaining its feet. He held the other man into him, arms tightly wound; a death grip.

“It’s still night. Probably close to an hour.”

The two of them held that embrace for a while. Sylvain felt warm tears trail down behind his neck to his back, and fronds of hair stuck to his face, tickled his eyes. They were both shirtless; rough calluses scraped against Sylvain’s spine as Felix dug in, as if terrified, perhaps of himself or of the self-inflicted complexity of his situation. Death was hard enough. His body still trembled, and his eyes remained searching.

“Felix,” Syvlain whispered his name softly, “I’ll go fetch something. Will you be all right for a minute?”

“Yeah.”

He returned with a bucket of water and a wool cloth from the end of the hallway, fresh cleaning supplies Cyril left to begin his chores in the morning. (Sylvain figured he wouldn’t fuss over them—he’d notice them missing, perhaps, but it happened all the time.) He began to soak the cloth in the cool, fresh water, twirling it until it wrapped around his finger and again in the opposite direction. He wrung it, almost desperately, over the bucket.

“You really haven’t changed, have you?” Felix’s voice was such an interjection that Sylvain almost lost his grip on the rag.

“Why do you say that?” (He was almost taken aback. It was an odd detour.)

“The way you carry your hands.”

“You see my hands all the time, Felix.”

“Perhaps. I’ve been watching them for a long time. But there’s a certain way you move them when I’m the focus of your attention.”

Sylvain grinned at this. He couldn’t help himself.

“You can’t say you’ve never noticed them,” Felix continued. “You’re a lot more self-aware of your behavior than you let on. Or like to admit,” he added.

A change happened in Sylvain as he turned back to Felix on the floor, sitting up against the wall, splotches of ink above his head. He transitioned so smoothly to him, his eyes fixed on something beyond the both of them, beyond the monastery. “You haven’t changed, either. Nothing ever escapes you. Remember when you noticed Ingrid’s fever?”

He vaguely scoffed at this. “She shouldn’t have tried to hide it from everyone. She was working herself to death.”

“I could say the same about you.”

No response. Cool cloth against boiling skin. He could have sworn steam wafted into the still air, but in this unreliable light…

Sylvain mimicked the motions he’d made in the bucket, swirling it over Felix’s cheeks, his nose, his forehead. Coarse cloth catching stray tears, mucus bubbled under his nose so unceremoniously, parched lips gummed with dry spit in the corners. Cloth back in the bucket, releasing these products of sorrow into the clear water, cloudy in a few moments. He contemplated dipping his own hair into the bucket, red like Ailell grass, melting into the tainted water, the remnants of Felix in his scalp.

“There’s something else you’ve noticed,” Felix began, abruptly again, intercepting the thought.

“The door?” Sylvain guessed. He tossed the cloth to the floor.

Felix smirked. “You know I left it unlocked on purpose. I never leave it unlocked.”

“That’s what I mean. I know you hear my footsteps, even in your sleep. Your vigilance leaves nothing unturned.”

“You’ve checked every night since my father died. Every night, for the past seven nights.”

“You never ask anyone directly for help—not even me. I’ve resolved myself to finding ways around this.”

“I’d never forgive you if you died for me, Sylvain.”

“I know.”

“They don’t sing about the people left behind.”

“I know.”

Sylvain once thought the war had brought them closer together; in some abstract way he was right, in the stuttering darkness of this climax to Felix’s grief. His hands drew themselves delicately across the now-clean face of this man he loved, freeing wet strands of his hair, smoothing them between two fingers, collecting the water he squeezed out of each end and putting out the candles one by one. Better privacy in the darkness, even with them already alone there; and the temporary chaos of the room, invisible to them now in the absence of light, could be forgotten.

“I don’t want to talk about him anymore.”

“We don’t have to. You’ve finally cried it out. That’s all I was waiting for, Felix.”

Even without sight he felt Felix trace his face with his fingers, as if sketching a portrait of him by heart; a mediator for the softness of their lips together. Sylvain’s hands dancing like a wading heron across Felix’s chest.

**Author's Note:**

> "don't even sing about it" is a song by the books. missing punctuation/run-on sentences are on purpose. thank you for reading


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